Whilst still a teenager BJ Cunningham launched his first enterprise, The Karma Connection, importing classic cars and Harley Davidsons from LA to London. This stopped abruptly when the market collapsed!

Taking his considerable debt, BJ Cunningham established DEATH™ Cigarettes, as ‘the honest smoke’. The Enlightened Tobacco Company began to gain such a foothold that it eventually found itself up against the combined might of the industry.

BJ Cunningham uses the DEATH cigarette brand to illustrate the power of provocation and how to flip a conservative market. In typically entertaining fashion, he also demonstrates that authentic and powerful branding demands the truth. The future is about market depth and involvement, not just awareness.

His verve and growing reputation for challenging norms led BJ to set up an integrated brand marketing agency, winning clients as diverse as Volkswagen, B&O, Fairline Boats and Nokia.

Brand Leadership: Profiting from the Truth

Authentic and powerful branding demands the Truth. The future is about market depth and involvement, not market width and awareness.

Companies are like people. Each one of us is made up of three separate perspectives - how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us and how we want to be perceived. The more integrated the three perspectives, the stronger we are. Companies are the same. If a company perceives itself in the same way as others perceive it and as it wants to be perceived, then it is strong. How a company sees itself is its internal culture. How others see it is its external market position. How a company wants to be perceived is the company's vision.

BJ Cunningham established the Enlightened Tobacco Company PLC, and then marketed a brand of cigarettes called ‘DEATH’ as ‘the honest smoke’. This act of heresy, though enormously successful with consumers, didn’t go down at all well with the tobacco industry. It eventually landed him in the European Court of Justice fighting against not only every Member State of Europe but also the might of the established tobacco industry.

BJ uses this experience to illustrate his straightforward brand thinking. Be sure of who you are and what you mean before you try to say anything. This demands answering to two key questions: What’s your Point and why should I Care? The answers express the intention or promise of the company, the company’s brand.

But the answers alone are not enough, they have to be communicated with clarity both internally within the organisation and then externally to customers.

• Provocative brand creation and marketing.
• Flipping the frame in a conservative market.
• The power of juxtaposition.
• Reversing Resistance.
• The solution always lies at the heart of the problem.
• Thought, Word, Action – branding: a process of conscious evolution.

Fee Group: £3k - £5k


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